Quentin Tarantino names modern cinema’s most unappreciated director: “Now they teach classes about him”
Based on how he’s approached the alleged final stretch of his filmmaking career, Quentin Tarantino probably couldn’t imagine a worse outcome than being remembered as overlooked, underrated, or unappreciated by future generations.
Ever since he publicly declared that he’d never make another feature after his tenth and final film, the pressure has been on. It’s only going to continue rising, too, with Tarantino almost obligated to helm one of the greatest movies ever made to add the final flourish to his legacy that he so desperately craves.
He’s only got himself to blame, and scrapping The Movie Critic hinted that he knows he’s placed expectations on his cinematic swansong that will require a monumental effort to achieve. Still, it’s not as if he hasn’t already secured his place as one of modern cinema’s definitive auteurs.
The two-time Academy Award winner altered the landscape of independent cinema in the 1990s with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and in the three decades since, he’s become one of the most unique, inventive, and easily identifiable writer and directors in Hollywood, so nobody would dream of saying he hasn’t gotten the credit he deserved.
On the other hand, somebody he worked with right at the beginning of his career fits that bill, at least as far as Tarantino is concerned. When most people think of Tony Scott, the first thing that comes to mind is his dazzling visuals, kinetic action sequences, innovative camerawork, and a constant desire to upgrade, evolve, and redefine his style.
That said, his detractors regularly accused him of favouring style over substance and focusing almost exclusively on mindless genre fare that relied on his ever-expanding bag of tricks at the expense of narrative substance. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Tarantino isn’t buying it.
“I loved his shit,” he said of Scott’s filmography. “He’s like Douglas Sirk; he never got respect, was too commercial, and people put him down. Now they teach classes about him.” By that measuring stick, he sees Sirk as ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood’s most unsung director, with Scott taking that berth for modern moviemakers.
The former steered a raft of melodramas to box office success in the 1950s without ever capturing the imagination of critics, only for his back catalogue to be reappraised and celebrated in the years that followed. It was common knowledge that Scott was one of his generation’s foremost visualists, but Tarantino thinks it’s only recently that he’s earned his stripes as a lauded artist.
He directed 16 films between 1983’s The Hunger and 2010’s Unstoppable, and while it’s true that most of them were action-packed and high-octane thrill rides like Beverly Hills Cop II, Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Crimson Tide, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, and Enemy of the State, Tarantino thinks it’s well overdue for some respect to be put on Scott’s name as a true auteur.
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